Next steps for our old guy after losing his companion

[Geordie127]

This is my first post here and I dont 't post a lot on forums so apologies I'm advance.

We said goodbye to Ace. We adopted him and he was going to be 7 in Jan or Feb. He came with his mate Julius who is same age (not sibblings).

Our time with Ace:
Ace has been fighting cancer for a year and had a surgery in December before we got him in April. 2 weeks after we got him he was making a noise when he breathed. Well he had a new mass, we had been giving him some meds to keep him comfy while he lived out his time. This last week we found another mass and his time finally came to a close today. He was very loved by Julius, my partner and me.

Into the unknown:
We are trying to determine a course of action. We want him to grieve, we dont want him to be alone. We have 2 other piggies Cam (male almost 2) and Cookie (female 1 and some change). Cam we found in our bushes and got him fixed before meeting cookie. They have lived together since August of 2024.

We will consult the vet before hand but we were trying to decide if we get cookie fixed and combine all 3 or take another action and involve some new piggies to the equation. Long term we want a combined group.

The reason we did not combine them prior was we have been unsure how all 4 would interact and the old men seemed happy being together. But now we are entering grieving we wanted to help Julius.

If we do involve a new piggy or 2 we want to make sure when Julius goes, 1 they stay with us and are integrated with Cam and Cookie.

My partner and I know enough to make them happy and care for them. We are not sure how fixing a 1 year old would go, we have a great vet and would consult but we would like some feedback on pairing and how to make all of our fury babies happy.

Thank you

 

[Piggies&buns]

Welcome to the forum and sorry for your loss.

Your option of fixing cookie and combining all three is not possible.
You can only keep one boar with (any number) sows. Trying to keep two (or more) boars with sows will immediately cause the boars to fight.
Cam will never accept Julius; there are likely to be injuries, Julius will still end up single so consequently cookie doesn’t need to go though surgery.

It’s good you didn’t attempt to bond julius/ace with cam/cookie back then as it would have been a complete disaster. Not only would all three boars have fought with each other, it would also have meant you wouldn’t even be able to make pairs afterwards - Julius/ace’s bond would have been permanently ruined by the attempt.

So your options going forward are:

1. Keep Julius single but have his cage beside cam and Cookie for interaction between the bars. This will be fine to keep Julius happy. If they weren’t already all used to living side by side prior to ace’s passing , then it will cause a bit of a stir when cam a cookie become aware of Julius at the divider. That should settle down in a couple of days.

When Julius passes you are then left with cam and cookie.
If you wish to have a herd, then you can still add in new sows with cam/cookie whenever you wish. However, any new sows you add would be best to be baby sows so cookie cannot be challenged as dominant sow. All newcomers need to fit in around her. Doing this the right way means a successful herd and not running the risk of needing to split anyone off into separate pairs.

This would be the best option if you definitely don’t want multiple cages going forward.

2. Attempt to find an already spayed young sow or get a young sow and have her spayed yourself. Then bond her with Julius. Assuming this bonding goes well they can stay together to see out julius’s life.
Once Julius passes you could then attempt to bond this sow with cam and cookie. However this comes with risks - this sow by then would not be a baby and may try to challenge cookie for dominance and thus bonding would fail and you would need to keep two separate herds.

3. Get a boar friend for Julius now but, again, you can never mix this boar with cam and cookie. You would be setting up to always having a separate pair (whether that is another pair of boars or neutering this boar and then bonding him with his own sow once Julius passes).

Adding More Guinea Pigs Or Merging Pairs – What Works And What Not?

 

[Geordie127]

I see, thank you for the information. The living areas for them are stacked and we could not fit them in a place next to one another in our current home. I think the option would be a female friend for Julius.

Happy we didn't try and merge them too. Cam had a brief interaction with the boys and poofed up. So we just thought it was better to let the two of them be alone cuz thats what they'd been for 6 years.

On Monday we will see about working with our vet on finding a new friend as they work with a few groups and could probably help us adopt someone who is fixed and provide a plan for introducing them when Julius is ready. I just dont want him to be waiting on us when he needs companionship.

 

[Piggies&buns]

Stacked cages are not ideal during the time piggies are single - they would ideally be side by side when they dont have a friend in the cage with them but of course that is tricky if space is the issue.
Piggies are usually ready to be bonded with a new friend somewhere between 1 and 4 weeks after their friend passes away. That doesn't mean they can't wait a little longer for you to find the right friend - that's your important factor here - as long as he is maintaining his weight at each routine weight check and isn't otherwise unhappy then you have time to do things the way most likely to succeed.
We would recommend you increase the routine weekly weight checks (more likely twice weekly; or daily if you become concerned) so you can monitor more closely that he is definitely still eating enough hay while he is grieving.

Ive added our grieving guide to help you further

Looking After a Bereaved Guinea Pig

It depends what options your vet can give you, as prior to bonding day they should ideally live side by side for a week to get to know each other through the bars.
I'm not sure if you know about the process of bonding and the requirement for it to be neutral territory, but I have added our bonding guide below so you can read up on the specifics of what needs to happen.

As long as you can have a plan for that sow to have her own new friend if she does not bond with Cam and Cookie when that time comes. There is no guarantee that they would accept her.
I believe sow spaying in the US is seen differently to in the UK and that you may find it easier to find a spayed sow than we would in the UK. In the UK sows are not routinely spayed for bonding purposes. It is only done if there is a medical need to do so (ie womb infection or ovarian cysts), so finding a spayed sow in rescue is pretty difficult in the UK. Finding neutered boars on the other hand is rather easy as it's an easier surgery and in a lot of cases boars are neutered by the rescues before being rehomed. It would mean that for us, this would be a very risky option as the sow is likely to be older (probably considerably so) and thus making bonding with an already bonded sow/boar pair a little bit more difficult.

Bonding and Interaction: Illustrated Bonding Dynamics and Behaviours

Keep us posted on how things go